like
our own people, except in one thing. This was that they were trained
simply to obey, and to carry out whatever they were told by their
rulers. I used, during numerous unofficial tours in Germany, to wander
about incognito, and to smoke and drink beer with the peasants and the
people whenever I could get the chance. What impressed me was the little
part they had in directing their own government, and the little they
knew about what it was doing. There was a general disposition to accept,
as a definition of duty which must not be questioned, whatever they were
told to do by the _Vorstand_. It is this habit of mind, dating back to
the days of Frederick the Great, with only occasional and brief
interruptions, which has led many people to think that the German
people at large have in them "a double dose of original sin." Even when
their soldiers have been exceptionally brutal in methods of warfare, I
do not think that this is so. The habit of mind which prevails is that
of always looking to the rulers for orders, and the brutality has been
that enjoined--in accordance with its own military policy of shortening
war by making it terrible to the enemy--by the General Staff of Germany,
a body before whose injunctions even the Emperor, so far as my
observation goes, always has bowed.

But I must now return to my formal visit to Berlin in the autumn of
1906. I was, as I have already said, everywhere cordially welcomed, and
at the end the heads of the German Army entertained me at a dinner in
the War Office, at which the War Minister presided, and there was
present, among others, the Chief of the German General Staff. They were
all friendly. I do not think that my impression was wrong that even the
responsible heads of the Army were then looking almost entirely to
"peaceful penetration," with only moral assistance from the prestige
attaching to the possession of great armed forces in reserve. Our
business in the United Kingdom was therefore to see that we were
prepared for perils that might unexpectedly arise out of this policy,
and not less, by developing our educational and industrial organization,
to make ourselves fit to meet the greater likelihood of a coming keen
competition in the peaceful arts.

One thing that seemed to me essential for the preservation of good
relations was that cordial and frequent intercourse between the people
of the two countries should be encouraged and developed. I set myself in
my speeches t